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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Toni Morrison on Creativity

Here are some excerpts from a 2009 interview with one of my favorite authors.

Q: Do you find you’ve become more creative as you’ve gotten older? Oh, yes. I’m much, much better with creative things—people generally get better. They just know more.

Q: Your mind certainly seems to have stayed fertile. Yes, but what’s really important is humor—the way you see through things. And I don’t mean just “Ho, ho, ho!” but real irony about the diabolical nature of things. If you don’t have that, you just collapse.

Q: Except most people probably don’t think “funny” when they think of ToniMorrison and her books. Well, let me tell you what the deal is about the happiness in my books. I do not write about people who are just going to live a happy life, because it’s not compelling, there’s no angst. But if people have had an epiphany, that is called happiness. Some way they are improved. It may be a hard lesson, but to me a good idea and realization is the best thing there is for the mind.

Q: You yourself certainly seem happy. How do you reconcile the desire to stay this way with the realities of aging, of loss? I can’t. I don’t reconcile. I’m unreconciled. Completely. I’m not even reconciled to my own death! What kind of outrage is that?

Q: So what does that mean—are we, you, approaching aging all wrong? No, no. We should be as active and cared for—in health terms—and busy as possible. The bad thing is regret.

Q: You have regret? Oh, yes. Full of it— everything I did right, I didn’t do well enough. I’m not morbid at all. It’s just that I would like to do it again.

Q: But you won the Nobel Prize! That made you happy? It made my mother happier. And it got me a lot of money.

Q: Did it change you? It changed other people—they look at you differently. And then people use you—nicely, but that’s okay. It’s like there’s a person who won the Nobel Prize, and her name is ToniMorrison. And then there’s a person right behind her named Chloe [Morrison’s birth name], and that’s me.

22 comments:

Love it! " . . . I'm not even reconciled to my own death. What kind of outrage is that!"

At one parameter of our property there is a cemetery - hidden behind a long stone wall and tall trees. But on occasion I hear motor and scraping/digging noises. It always takes me a moment to realize that a grave is being dug. I try to sit with that - as close as I get to being a monk sitting in a cemetery - and absorb the reminder that that is my fate too. So challenging to absorb and accept. Helps a bit to know nobel prize winners struggle with the same issue. Thanks for post.

I am reading a book all the time it seems. I looked up what she has written and I don't think I have read one yet. I will definitely start. "Jazz" looks like a good one. I love the music, smooth jazz of today.

I hate to admit that The Bluest Eye" is the only book of hers I read. "Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike." So sad and so beautiful and so sad.

I have so many personal associations to this book but they all sound silly as I type them. Instead of sharing them I will instead thank you for this lovely interview. It is inspiring to think that with age creativity and creative fertility grows.

Fascinating post, sallymandy!!!Thank you!!!;^)We read "Recitatif" in Literature class this last semester. It was my first introduction to Toni Morrison. I was intrigued at her style. We had great discussions on this piece in class. She is brilliant. I wrote a paper on how she was so clever with her weaving of the stereotypes into the piece that one can never really decide who is black and who is white. I was forever changed. And grateful.It is amazing that she is full of humility in this interview. Honesty and truth reign.;^)C

I am definitely a fan. Beloved is an incredible book - so hard to read in so many ways, but even now, long after I read it, I still think about it. She is remarkably frank in that interview, especially her comments about regret ... I must go and read the whole thing!

Thanks for posting the interview. She's a beautiful person both inside and outside in my opinion. I do know I haven't read her last book tho and this is just the nudge I need to check my online library.

Thank you for sharing this. I love Morrison's fiction but it is difficult to say which one is my favorite as they have each wrapped me up in the prose and the story and made the whole thing so real, like a treasure. Not a happy treasure per se, but certainly a jewel held close.

The most recent one I read was "A Mercy" a book that truly haunts. The first novel I read was "Beloved". Each of them has burnt itself into my heart.

YOu know what I think is the saddest thing? When people just die in the prime of their creativity and their life, like a designer friend at the age of 50 a few months ago. That's what I think about when I read something like this. Thank you!